Billionaire Hypocrisy: George Soros May Owe $7 Billion
In Taxes

“You
support President Obama’s proposal to increase taxes on the wealthy?”That was the question put to George Soros on CNN some
three years ago. Here was his answer:

“Yes, very much… the super bubble really resulted in
creating a great increase in inequality, and now we have the after effect where
you have slow growth, but if you could have better distribution of income, then
the average American would actually be better off.”

There’s no question that “everyday Americans” (as a
reminder, those are the people Hillary Clinton wants to help by running for
president… well, those people and perhaps a few foreign governments and any
investment bank who iswilling to payher husband six figures for a speech) would be better
off if they got a larger piece of the pie, but as we’ve seen over the past
several months, that’s not likely to happen aswage growth declinesfor the 80% of American workers classified by the BLS
as “non-supervisory” even as the country’s supervisors see their pay increase,
and as Fed policy continues to inflate the assets most likely to be
concentrated in the hands of the wealthy. As this sad reality continues to play
itself outdestroyingthe American Middle Class in the process, we wondered
if Soros was doing his best to ameliorate the situation by redistributing more
of his vast wealth to the very same “average Americans” about which he
expressed so much concern in 2012. The short answer: no.

George Soros likes to say the rich should pay more
taxes. A substantial part of his wealth, though, comes from delaying them.
While building a record as one of the world’s greatest investors, the
84-year-old billionaire used a loophole that allowed him to defer taxes on fees
paid by clients and reinvest them in his fund, where they continued to grow
tax-free. At the end of 2013, Soros—through Soros Fund Management—had amassed
$13.3 billion through the use of deferrals, according to Irish regulatory
filings by Soros…

Congress closed the loophole in 2008 and ordered hedge
fund managers who used it to pay the accumulated taxes by 2017. A New
York-based money manager such as Soros would be subject to a federal rate of
39.6 percent, combined state and city levies totaling 12 percent, and an
additional 3.8 percent tax on investment income to pay for Obamacare, according
to Andrew Needham, a tax partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore.Applying those rates to Soros’s deferred income would
create a tax bill of $6.7 billion…

When Soros founded his firm, nothing in U.S. law
prevented money managers from postponing the acceptance of client fees and
letting the money remain in their funds, where it could grow untaxed. But doing
so wasn’t really an option for funds based in the U.S., because if managers
didn’t take the fees, their clients wouldn’t be able to deduct them from their
own taxable income.

Hedge fund managers could circumvent this obstacle by
setting up parallel offshore funds for investors who weren’t subject to U.S.
taxes and who therefore didn’t care whether their fund manager deferred taxes
on the fees. That way, the fees—typically 2 percent of the amount invested and
20 percent of any profits—plus any investment gains, could grow without being
taxed until the managers withdrew the money…

A manager with Soros’s track record who started with
$12 million from investors, took 20 percent of the profits, and reinvested that
money tax-free over 40 years, would end up with $15.9 billion. If that same
manager paid federal, state, and local taxes on the fees and related investment
gains before reinvesting them, the figure would shrink to $2.4 billion…

Here’s
the simple math:

In the end, it would appear that we simply have yet
another case of billionaire hypocrisy: "please
raise taxes on all the uber-wealthy... except me."

Frases que Gosto

“The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person − every person − needs: namely, loving personal concern. We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need. … In the end, the claim that just social structures would make works of charity superfluous masks a materialist conception of man: the mistaken notion that man can live ‘by bread alone’ - Papa Bento XVI (Caritas Est)

The righ wing anarchy of individualism and the free market will lead to a bully-ocracy of wage slavery. The left wing anarchy of the "right" to choose one's sexual identity will lead to a bully-ocracy where tolerance is not enough, and those who don't approve will be jailed. What will both anarchies try to destroy? The family - Kevin O´Brien (Gilbert Magaz. fev 2011)

When central authority abdicates, the vacuum is filled not by groups of hippies living in harmony and following-their-bliss, and not by Austrian economists celebrating the free market and following-their-greed, but by thugs, by terror - Kevin O'Brien (Gilber Magaz. )

There is less difference than many suppose between the ideal Socialist system, in which the big business is run by the the State, and the present Capitalist systema, in which the State is run by the big business - Chesterton

The poor object to being governed badly. The rich object to being governed at all. - Chesterton

"We should not say improbable things, or things we do not know. We must see their real, and not their imagined lives." - Santa Teresa de Lisieux sobre a vida dos santos